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Monthly Archives: December 2013

This interview with Bluetip singer/guitarist Jason Farrell was the second time we spoke for Eventide. The first had been an interview with Sweetbelly Freakdown. While the two groups shared some members, each had their own idiosyncrasies, and their own obsessions. Bluetip took a guitar-driven post-punk sound and added a pervasive air of paranoia to it. One of Farrell’s lyrics in particular — “stamps make shitty band-aids” — is about as grittily evocative as you can get. The moods created by this band are still inside my head, fifteen years later; if that isn’t a testament to what they got right, musically speaking, I don’t know what is.

These days, Farrell is currently making music as one of the members of Red Hare. This interview appeared in the fifth issue of Eventide. And if you’d like to see what the original pages look like, Dischord’s Tumblr has you covered.

Swiz were a band that I’d often see cited as an influence by bands I liked, but — as of 1996 or so — I hadn’t actually heard them. Somewhere in there, I heard the debut 7″ from Sweetbelly Freakdown, which found the reunited lineup of Swiz making music under a new name, but with a relatively similar aesthetic to their predecessor. (I soon tracked down the discography that Jade Tree had released.)

Sweetbelly Freakdown recorded a seven inch and a self-titled album; its members went on to such projects as the memorably-named Jesus Eater and Retinsonic. A few years later, I would also talk with guitarist Jason Farrell about his other band at the time, Bluetip. More recently, 3/4 of the group’s lineup has reconvened as Red Hare, and recorded an album that was released by Dischord.

This interview took place in February 1997, after Sweetbelly Freakdown had finished a show at Wetlands with Texas is the Reason, Promise Ring, and Rocket Science. It appeared in Eventide’s second issue.